


Serpent's Tooth

by SpaceJackalope



Category: Children's Stories Made Horrific, The Merry Spinster, The Merry Spinster - Daniel Mallory Ortberg, The Thankless Child
Genre: Discussion of gore, F/M, Gender categories that's so cute, Hello my name is SpaceJackalope and I love small fandoms and rarepairs, LGBTQ Themes, Let Paul be happy, Other, Rated E for sex + canon-typical violence + canon-typical horror, Themes of Child Abuse, Unofficial Sequel, themes of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 16:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15934256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceJackalope/pseuds/SpaceJackalope
Summary: Paul is terribly lucky to have the godmother in her new home. Terribly, here, is a synonym for appallingly.Paul will live happily ever after, whatever it takes.





	Serpent's Tooth

Paul was all right now, earnestly if not honestly all right, now that she’d had some water.

The priest’s son, whose name was Mignonette, patted her back and shyly kissed the top of her head, and said he thought perhaps they had better save the argument he had proposed (over who would get to be wife) until her breath was coming easily again. Paul assented.

She looked out the window, where she had seen the godmother, and found no person and no body in sight. She began to feel her own limbs return to her, first hyperaware and then comfortably unaware that she had a body, and that it was hers alone. She’d certainly been told by her father (which meant there was little merit in it) that a fine meal could give a person nightmares, and her wedding night had been celebrated with a crawfish boil and nectarine pie. But Paul was a fair-minded girl, and decided that _even if_ her father was not objectively correct, her mind could certainly have been imbalanced by celebration, unfamiliar people, and an eager bedding. The godmother had never been here, in this house; it was only the last wisps of a nightmare that had made her think so.

“Paul,” said the voice attached to the hand that had brought her husband (wife?) the water. “Paul, I believe it is common decency to greet your godmother when she comes calling.”

The blood drained from Paul’s face, but the steady smile did not waver. She turned her head to meet the godmother’s gaze over Mignonette’s shoulder, and said: “Morning, godmother.” The godmother noted with a dangerous inclination of her head that Paul had not specified what kind of morning Paul bade her, but she smiled back. The funny board on the hall floor beyond squeaked with someone’s approach, and the godmother vanished rather than pay courtesy to whichever member of the priest’s family had put their foot wrong. And still Paul could not take a full breath, and still she ensured she did not show it.

⁂

“Well then,” said Mignonette’s mother, the priest. “What are you two thinking you’d like to do?” Paul’s wife (husband?) squeezed her hand below the surface of the oaken table. Here, meals were taken on a screened porch, suited for most weather. Paul’s parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, an uncle-in-law, and twin nieces-in-law had let Mignonette entertain his suitors with minimal interference, but no lack of interest. Paul was briefly distressed by the volume of attention they now openly paid her, as she was aware he had chosen a girl both strange and a stranger, but she gripped Mignonette’s hand back, and reminded herself they were only curious.

“I think we haven’t made up our minds,” she said, voice calm. “We’d both be content as wife or husband, so we’ve been going back and forth.”

“Ah, well,” said her uncle-in-law sagely, while his priest-sister nodded, “there’s no rush. Were you trained both ways as well?”

The words choked in her throat, but Paul shrugged. “Neither, actually. I—my—well. We didn’t expect I would marry at all.” She frowned and fiddled with her spoon, trying to inconspicuously reflect the space behind her. Was someone standing there?

Mignonette’s hand shifted to Paul’s shoulder. “You’ll be perfect whatever we decide,” he swore, “as long as you’re happy.” Paul laughed awkwardly and hoped his family—her family, now, her family of strangers, who loved this boy something fierce—did not hate her too much for taking him away from someone who knew how to be wed.

The priest gave the blessing of first shoots and first buds, and the family ate, talking of things urgent and things mundane, their faces laughing and alien in the evening light, and Paul wished she knew who had salted her potatoes when she wasn’t looking.

⁂

“I love you,” said the priest’s son, a breathy exhalation from between Paul’s legs. Paul twitched, surprising herself, and Mignonette ran a steadying hand along her outer thigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was the wrong thing to say, obviously. I don’t mean to rush you. I’m just—I’m so very _glad_ —”

Paul cut him off, placing two fingers on his lips, and then, in a rush of inspiration, sliding them inside his mouth, willing and sweet. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re doing marvelously.” The priest’s son smiled at her with his eyes, laid his head on her abdomen, and curled his tongue savoringly around her fingers. She brushed his hair, long and soft, out of his face, and curled her toes in appreciation.  

Mignonette slid his mouth off her with a wet sound that brought an ironic blush to her face. He crawled up the bed and nosed her neck. “Paul, my beloved, I have an idea.” Paul wiggled so that he could lay his lips directly on her ear, and her skin thrilled from her fresh-shorn scalp to her long-callused soles as he explained. Paul rolled the priest’s son over, and flipped herself so her head pointed to the footboard. Mignonette laughed, “you could’ve stayed on your pillow, if you’d wanted.”

Paul stretched her arms out. “All right. Toss it to me and let me get on with tasting you.” He complied happily, rearranged their limbs, and gave of himself to Paul.

When they had both left Earth and returned to it, Mignonette took Paul in his arms and swished his tongue across her palate, both of them tasting their own salt in the other’s mouth. And when they were both wrung of almost all desire to move, Paul curled herself around his back, her broad shoulder comforting the priest’s son into bold tenderness again. “When you’re ready,” he whispered, and she expected him to speak of roles or titles or work, “when you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, I hope you’ll tell me who hurt you. Or how you were hurt. Whatever you want. And if what you want is silence, I’ll make my own guesses. But no harm will come to you again, my husband-or-wife.”

Paul sighed against his skull. “You’re so much better at this than I’m ever going to be,” she confessed.

He twined his fingers with hers in the hollow of his breast. “I lo—I _like_ you, just as you are.” Paul could not see his face, but it had a set she would later learn to be his puzzle-solving face. “I do not say this because I’m expecting anything back. It’s freely given. You are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and no person will bruise, cut, or break you again.”

Paul was so silent that Mignonette feared she’d fallen asleep, but then: “I never said she was a _person_. I will _never_ say she is a _person_.” And he felt her tears start, but she did not release his hands, so he brought hers to his lips and troubled her no further.   

⁂

“Gracious,” Paul’s father-in-law said, “the woodpile is full, and the chapel is gleaming. Our paths are free of weeds, there’s a new barrel of beer brewing in the cellar, and the day’s ration has been transformed into stew and bread. Paul,” he said, “this cannot all be your doing, can it?” For Paul had volunteered some hours before to be the adult who would remain at home, guard the children, and ensure the perimeter of her new land; for she had no education in either preparing a parish member’s body for burial or tracking monsters.

She looked at him in surprise. “Only the food. I suppose the children—?”

Dillon and Judah (her new-made nieces, 6), and Maple (her youngest brother-in-law, 12), exchanged warring looks, and the twins won. Maple shrugged casually: “Paul’s godmother helped.”

“Her godmother came to visit?” He was right to be alarmed, as the roads had been dangerous, thick with monsters who had scented brains. “Well, we should figure out where she’d like to sleep—”

But Judah shrugged. “Oh, she’s gone, for now.” Her grandfather’s mouth turned down, and he squinted with concern at the horizon. “Oh, Gramps, don’t worry about her. Paul’s godmother can read, and write a little when the situation calls for it; she can walk in the noonday sun without fainting; commission deacons; haggle with the grocer; perform minor miracles; turn a man into a dog for upward of three hours; cast out territorial spirits; slaughter a chicken without spilling a drop of blood; initiate mysteries; and she can name over one thousand neurotoxins. I’m sure she can walk herself home.”

The priest’s husband laughed, impressed. “Then we are lucky to have her in our lives.” And he winked at Paul, who folded her arms and smiled shakily back.

Dillon tugged on his arm. “Gramps, Gramps, that’s nothing! Come and see! Paul shot _three_ monsters’ heads off, all by herself, and she cast out the wasps that nested in the henhouse, and she taught us—well, she _tried_ to teach Judah and me, and _did_ teach Maple—how to whistle!”

Judah gave Paul a shy, sideways glance. “The path was cleared by wild rabbits, and some bats ate up all the bugs while I swept the chapel. And all the rabbits and bats found Paul when they were done, and kissed her with their tongues.” 

“Sounds like Paul!” said Mignonette’s father, and he picked Dillon up, told Paul to “go get some rest,” and followed Judah’s excited skipping to see the Paul-slain monsters.

⁂

“Paul,” said her niece, days later, “your godmother said I’m a graceful but ungrateful girl. And she said my sister is grateful but ungraceful. And she said we have to tell her which is worse, and why, or she will not love us.”

Paul set down her basket of asparagus, and took Dillon’s basket of eggs from her, and set it down as well. She knelt with the child’s hands in her own. “And do you and Judah want the godmother to love you?”

Dillon thought about it. “Not like we want you to love us,” she said, finally, with finality. “But your godmother says you don’t love anyone, not ever.”

Paul’s mouth fell open, and she felt heat prick at the corners of her eyes. She hugged Dillon close in reply, and to give herself time. When they parted, Dillon was grinning, and Paul felt her own face match. “Dillon, listen to me. If I get a chance, I’ll tell Judah myself, but it may be easier for you to whisper to her when you get in bed tonight. Do not speak ill of the godmother unless you are far from the house, or you can speak directly into Judah’s ear. But tell her that I said you are each both graceful and grateful, and you do not need the godmother’s love. Have you got that?”

Dillon recited it like a catechism, like Judah had rattled off the godmother’s skills, and then stuffed her hands in her new skirt’s pockets. “Paul?”

Paul was gathering the baskets again. “Yes?”

“Can—may I tell Judah you said you already love us?”

“Oh! Yes, of course. It’s the truth, that’s how I feel about your whole family,” Paul said, and she meant it, but could not bring herself to say the word _love_.

⁂

“What on Earth has gotten _into_ you three?” fret-scolded the priest, staring at her youngest-born child and oldest-born grandchildren, who sat shame-faced around the kitchen table, trying not to look at the blood-spattered floor. Paul stood at the counter diagonal, disinfecting a needle. “You were shelling snap peas! How did that turn into a fistfight? Preserve us, bless us—you could’ve so easily split your heads on the hearthstones!” Agitated, she unfastened her hair, twisting and repining it to channel her energy. “Well—any explanations?”

All three children, and Paul, turned their heads in the direction of the kitchen sink. But the priest could not see what they saw, or perhaps simply did not understand. So she finally sighed, and assigned the children to read certain relevant psalms about peacefulness, fraternity, and truthfulness. “And I want you all to thank Paul for pulling you apart, and cleaning up your wounds—especially you, Maple, as nobody else in this house could have stitched your lip finely enough not to leave a scar. And what kind of family Paul must think she’s married into, I don’t like to think.”

Paul could see the embarrassment, concern, and relief writ plainly on her mother-in-law’s face. All the same, to be certain, she winked at the children and whispered: “I still think you’re good as gold.” All three relaxed, and she felt a knot of worry in her own stomach ease.

As soon as her family had left the room, Paul turned to the sink. “I want to speak with you,” she told the godmother, who had stood and watched the whole time.  

“Oh? Paul wishes to speak with me? How fortunate I am. You show favor freely to everyone but me, and yet I abandoned your sisters for you. Best-loved, least-loving Paul.”

Paul imagined Gomer and Robin, missing the godmother, missing Paul, directionless and unyoked. She thought of her new family, how the adults praised the signs of the godmother’s presence, praised Paul for bringing her to them. How the children had rent each other’s flesh because the godmother said only the winner could have a lump of sugar. How her teenage siblings-in-law had grown unable to sleep at night, and had taken to startling at the soft padding of the family pets.

Paul understood, and Paul remembered.

She had run from her house to the priest’s, barefoot with no hat in the noonday sun, and fallen to her knees on the threshold. “If you please, priest’s son,” she had said, “if you are not in the middle of anything, there are three things I want, should you be willing.”

“I’m very sorry, Paul,” the priest’s son had said, “but first I’m going to have to insist on giving you water, and an icepack. And if you’d be very generous, I’d like you to come sit on the softest armchair.”

And Paul had laughed through her pain—because she had, very much, been in pain—and consented. When her thirst had been slaked, and her pain dulled, she confessed to him that the water and ice had been two of her wishes anyway.

“Oh,” he had said, his dark eyes merry and tender, “that won’t do at all. I promised you three wishes, so you’ll have to come up with something I may give you.”

And she had laughed again, and thought for a bit. “I’d like you to hold my hand.”

Mignonette, the priest’s son, held Paul’s hand.

“And I’d like you to look at my face, and tell me honestly if you think my nose has been broken.”

He had cupped her face in his free hand and looked. “Yes, I think it has. And I think you are no less handsome.”

She had grinned, though it hurt. “Well—I really came to say that as soon as I’d gone home, I realized how badly I hadn’t wanted to leave you at all last night. If you’ve still a mind to marry me, then I shall marry you.”

And she had made merry and married and pressed away the feeling of being godmothered, and then she had told herself she was, very likely, the one who was wrong, who was mistaken. Not real, or if it was real; not so bad; and if it was so bad; justified. For the godmother could read, and write a little when the situation called for it; she could walk in the noonday sun without fainting; commission deacons; haggle with the grocer; perform minor miracles; turn a man into a dog for upward of three hours; cast out territorial spirits; slaughter a chicken without spilling a drop of blood; initiate mysteries; and she could name over one thousand neurotoxins. What goddaughter would not be lucky to have her? Indeed, what goddaughter could possibly even live without her?

But now, she looked into the godmother’s face and said: “You can’t do this.”

The godmother’s chin had lifted. “There is nothing I cannot do, Paul. You know this.”

“You cannot live in this house, even if you make yourself unseen; you cannot hurt its children; you cannot demand their love; you cannot bind yourself to me; you cannot return to my sisters’ house, or follow myself, or any member of my families to any house we may live in in the future. You will leave this parish altogether, and not return.”

“And why is that, Paul?” The godmother’s tone was mocking, condescending, bitterly amused.

“Because I will make it so.”

The godmother struck her, for the second time in Paul’s life. Hit her a third, a fourth, a fifth time on her face. No pain blossomed in Paul’s flesh, no mark appeared, and her balance was barely thrown. The godmother seized her by the collar of her old, sage-green shirt, and shook her roughly. “What’s wrong with you, Paul?”

 _I’m not the one hitting someone_ , Paul thought, but could not bring herself to say. The godmother threw her against the wall, and Paul’s head connected solidly with the cabinet, but still she felt no pain.

“What’s _wrong_ with you, Paul? No heart— _never_ had a heart—and now no vessels to bruise, no nociceptors to carry your pain? Look at what’s become of you, Paul, since you have abandoned my affections for these strangers. Your very body knows I am the one who loves you best; the only one who loves you, with your dangerous, wild heart; you who are like the beasts who love you so well; you whose false love will leave your little Mignonette and his family pitiful husks from trying to please you. Your body abandons you. Only I can restore it, and you know the reason why.”

“Do I?”

“Clever girl, so much cleverer than your sisters. Why am I here at all?”

“Because you followed me,” Paul snaps, impatient.

“Not in this house; in your life, Paul.”

“I don’t know! You just showed up one day and said you were the godmother.”

“Not _the_ godmother, Paul. I’m _your_ godmother. And you are my goddaughter. We are already bound to each other, child. I will follow you always. Because I love you, Paul, I warn you that if you stay in this house, your selfishness will rot every person and thing to dust before your eyes, for you have not learned to love. But if you stop this foolishness, I will teach you as the woman you are, and not a child, and teach you your errors and show you my knowledge. And one day, you shall be a godmother too.”

At that thought, Paul’s mind went blank, and she realized only after the door slammed behind her that she’d stalked out of the kitchen. She sought Mignonette and found him, to her horror, on the front porch, with an angry red mark swelling on his cheek. His was sitting upright, but only just.

 “What happened, who hurt you? Let me get you some ice—”

But Mignonette caught her wrist. “I don’t know, I don’t know what happened, I think it’s because someone tried to hurt _you_.”

Paul scoffed. “What, caught you in the dark and thought: _oh, long curls and a willow-reed figure, definitely Paul_? Sweetest, I…” She sucked in her breath, dismayed, and stared at him pleadingly.

“Flesh of my flesh,” her wife-or-husband said, sheepishly, “no harm will come to you, for your burdens are my burdens. Well. Physically, at least. You have a look on your face. You know you can tell me, right?”

Paul said of course she did, but closed her lips and helped him to their bedroom, before going to the medicine chest.

“Godmother,” she whispered, her head bowed. “I understand now, what will happen to-to me, if I carry on like this.” The godmother did not appear, but Paul knew in her bones that she had heard, and that the godmother smiled sharp and keen. “I will pack a bag. Meet me tomorrow at noon, in the family graveyard. That should be far enough from the house, I think. We will give these people some peace, you and I.” And the family’s oldest, blackest cat, listening nearby, came and licked Paul’s knuckles with something like concern.

⁂

Paul wore her strong boots, her oldest clothes, and a wide-brimmed hat. She carried a cloth bundle, a leather bag, and the priest’s second-best monster killing gun.

The godmother, when she spotted her, wore no hat and carried no goods. Each grave was enclosed by a cage of cold iron, protection against resurrection men. The godmother, leaning against the tallest one, squinted at Paul. “Is that a gun?”

“The monsters have been bold this season.”

“You know I can protect us. Or do you not trust me after all?”

“Some monsters are subtle at first, and need something faster than fast to fell them.”

The godmother exhaled a puff of smoke—was that cigarette always in her hand?—and said, “You’ve grown cannier still, Paul. This is Newton’s 4th law. An object unaltered by force can only be touched with backup.”

“So it is,” Paul responded, and there was silence. Paul set her things down on the earth.

“North, East, South or West?”

“Excuse me?”

“Where shall we roam, Paul? You said you wanted to leave this parish. You said you wanted to give the people peace from you.”

Paul squinted at the horizon, and pointed. “That way, I think. What would you call it, the direction of the hanging rock? East-north-east?”

The godmother turned her back to Paul, one hand on her hip with her thumb hooked through a beltloop. She took a long drag on her cigarette. Paul raised the monster-killing gun, and aimed it at the back of the godmother’s head. In the inhalation after she’d released the safety, but before she could pull the trigger, the godmother flicked ash from her cigarette, and two lurching, inky, sticky beings tackled Paul from behind, and a third took away the gun.

The godmother turned slowly, her smile thin and sad. “Oh, Paul,” she said, while Paul struggled against the summonings. “I expected better from you. Well. Actually, I didn’t. But I hoped for better. That is to say, it crossed my mind that you might finally behave like an _adult_.” She crossed to the summoning which held the gun, and coolly took it, and snapped it in two. “You could be so clever and mature. Pity you don’t ever use that brain of yours.” The godmother pulled a pair of leather gloves out of her pocket. They were strangely peach-colored and fine, less like the skin of an animal, and more like Paul’s own skin. “You know what I’m going to have to do to you. Don’t you, Paul?” Paul, pinned belly-down against the earth, closed her eyes tightly, like she had seen something too profane or sacred, and bravely fought against an urge to vomit. She pressed her forehead against the sun-hot ground.

The godmother knelt by Paul’s head. She clawed at Paul’s hair, too short to be grabbed properly, and made a disgusted noise. She made do with the back of Paul’s collar, forced her into a kneeling position. “Will you beg my forgiveness, goddaughter? Or are you content with suicide?”

Paul opened her eyes slowly. “Godmother,” she said softly, calmly, the right words coming to her without conscious thought and flooding her veins with warmth, like alcohol, like love. “I disown and disavow you. You have godmothered me without my consent. You are no godmother of mine, and I have never been your goddaughter. You are less than dust to me, you are _nothing_ , and I pray that to nothing you will return!” And with that, she spat in the godmother’s face.

With her free hand, the godmother wiped Paul’s spit from her face with a flick. She reached for her belt, and Paul again did what she must, giving a plaintive, feral howl. The godmother rolled her eyes. “Bitch.”

Paul closed her eyes so that she would not have to see the knife, and the coyotes descended.

Before she even knew the beasts were there, the summonings’ hands were gone from her, and she, suddenly unsupported, fell flat on her face. Furry, warm bodies brushed harmlessly against her. She rolled onto her side, curled in a fetal position, and opened her eyes. A coyote skidded from a run to a halt, gave her face a friendly lick, and bounded in the direction of something beyond her. She was tempted to look, but then she realized that the air was not filled with the sound of metal tearing, as she had assumed, but of the godmother screaming. She closed her eyes again, and waited. The screaming ended, and was replaced by the sound of wings.

She thought she would stand and look when she was ready, but finally realized she never would be ready. So she waited until she was no longer shaking, and arose. The coyotes were arrayed in a semicircle to her right, and the vultures in a semicircle to her left. When she was fully standing, they all bowed their heads. She took an experimental step forward, and they parted, allowing her to approach the…the remains. The skeleton, and some cartilage, lay intact. To its right was an organized array of what Paul was mildly embarrassed to recognize immediately as the edible portions of what had been the godmother. The inedible tissues had been laid to the skeleton’s left. There was also a puddle at the skeleton’s feet, of sticky black gunk and smashed gun pieces. Paul crossed her arms. The largest and shiniest coyote approached her, ensured he’d caught her attention, and inclined his head toward the godmother’s liver. She took it, wrapped it in her handkerchief, and placed it in her leather bag.

Paul bowed her thanks to the coyotes and vultures, and gave them leave to reward themselves. They carried away their prizes, and vanished more swiftly than she felt mortal animals ought to have been able to. She rested, washed her hands from her canteen, and ate her lunch. Then she untied her cloth bundle, took out the shovel, and buried the godmother’s bones. She was back at the house by 3 o’clock.

⁂

Mignonette found her in the kitchen, staring stone-faced at a piece of liver cupped in her hands, dripping blood into the copper sink. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing the join between her neck and jaw.

“Hello,” Paul replied, absently hoping he would leave quickly so she did not need to risk staining him.

“What’s wrong?” he pleaded, instantly alert. He twisted, peered into Paul’s face. Whatever he saw there made him perk up for a split second, and then he remembered the liver. “My love. Your face…” He bit his lip. “What is it you’re trying to decide? May I help?”

Paul met his eyes, and a look of understanding passed between them, more intimate than any sex. It occurred to her briefly that to tell him would be to marry him anew, in a different way. “I’m trying to decide whether or not to eat her liver,” she confessed. Mignonette settled himself around her back, a comforting warmth. “I want her power, but I’m afraid it may turn me into something like her. The coyote was not very forthcoming.” She was a little surprised he offered her no shock, which would have granted her the illusion that he did not already recognize her capacity to consort with coyotes, kill godmothers, and eat flesh of suspect origin. She knows these are not things in his nature, but she thinks she knows what his shadows would look like. “What would you do, Mignonette?”

“I think I might eat it,” he admitted. “But I don’t think you should. We already know her very being is poison to you, inside and out. And you do not need her powers anyway. You have your own.” Paul gave an uncertain frown. Mignonette did not see it, but he knew it was there. “Paul,” he said, rolling her name. “My husband-or-wife, you can read, and write beautifully when the situation calls for it; run hell-for-leather in the noonday sun without fainting; shrive souls; speak with beasts, birds, and bugs, and receive their aid and reverence; heal wounds; purify water with a stern glance; revive drought-stricken crops; slay monsters; predict the weather with greater accuracy than any known almanac; and can name over one thousand antitoxins. And that’s only as far as my list has gotten on the strength of a month’s acquaintance and your reserved nature.”

Paul laughed, bright and open, and wiggled out of Mignonette’s embrace. She opened the back door with her elbow, flung the godmother’s liver to the mercies of whatever beast might reach it first, and washed her hands and forearms off at the pump. She straightened to find Mignonette smiling encouragingly at her, leaning against the doorframe, and sprinted back across the yard to kiss him, laughing again.

⁂

Paul took Mignonette to her mother-cypress. They lay in its shade, fingers laced together, and talked about the future. “I haven’t asked—do you want children, Mignonette?”

“I’d like them. You?”

“I think I might. Now that I’m not afraid.”

He kissed her temple. “I’m so proud of you.”

She giggled. “ _Stop_. Let’s plant garlic, I miss having it easy to hand.”

“Mmm, that sounds nice. I want to make bread with it.”

“Delicious,” Paul responded, and gave him a wink that left him pink under his brown skin. She sighed. “We need to make up our minds about who’s going to be wife, so that your mother can enter it into the parish book.”

Mignonette snuggled closer to her. “I change my mind every time I think it through. I leave it to you.”

“Do you think—would you be okay with—can we be both?”

“I’m not sure I follow, but keep talking.”

“You know how we both feel like—like we’re made of patchwork? We’re each made up of bits that yearn to be husband, as much as other bits can’t bear to be anything but wife. Do you want to just…break the rules?”

Mignonette’s eyes, when Paul turned back to him, shone with tears, but he grinned. “I _love_ you,” he gasped, and Paul kissed his forehead and stroked his hair.

“I love you too,” Paul said, for the first time. Mignonette made a content noise, deep in his throat. “Can—can I give you something?” Paul, on receiving a nod, inhaled carefully. “Mignonette, you are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, bone of my bone. No person will bruise, cut, or break you again, for your burdens are my burdens. I’d have said so sooner, only I didn’t realize it would actually _work_ until…well. Until it did. And then I realized what you really meant when you said you loved me.” And she ran her hands across his back and neck and kissed him breathless.

Paul’s mother-spiders gave them a wedding quilt. When the priest asked her son and his wife-and-husband whether they knew the pattern’s name, Paul shrugged, and told her it was a broken circle. The quilt, I am told, remains in the priest’s house, and the parish has never since seen a godmother. And sometimes, if they think you’re not looking, you can see the coyotes there slaughter a chicken without spilling a drop of blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I love Paul and want her to be happy, I realized I'd written an entire sequel in my head. This is it. I didn't tag it as a fix-it fic because, really, I think The Thankless Child is perfect as it is, cliffhanger and all.
> 
> The priest's son got a name because I felt like it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> "Flesh of my flesh..." is imprecisely quoted from Genesis. "Serpent's Tooth," like "The Thankless Child," is from King Lear.
> 
> Categorized as F/M because it *might* be accurate, since Paul uses she/her and daughter, while the priest's son uses he/him and son. Also categorized as Other because they're much more complicated than that.
> 
> Hey, the monsters in The Thankless Child? Are they zombies? Because I kinda think they're zombies.
> 
> Please let me know if anything in this fic needs a content warning more than it needs the element of surprise (i.e. cannibalism)!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as cartograffiti, for more content about horror, fairy tales, and queerness!


End file.
